Sales of any tablet are going to look bleak compared to Apple’s iPad, which sold 4.7 million units in the recent quarter.
The outlook for Motorola Mobility’s Xoom tablet is particularly bleak, according to Global Equities analyst Trip Chowdry. Chowdry said the first Android 3.0 "Honeycomb" tablet sold somewhere between 5 percent to 15 percent of the 500,000 to 800,000 units manufactured.
Chowdry, who surveyed 6 Costco stores, 5 Verizon stores, 5 Best Buy stores and 3 Staples stores, to reach his conclusions, puts Xoom sales somewhere between 25,000 and 120,000 units. Compared to the iPad’s monster sales, this could be considered a failure to compete.
Motorola, which is in its quiet period until it announces first quarter earnings April 28, declined to comment to eWEEK for this story. Verizon Wireless, which released its earnings last week, took a different view.
Verizon spokesperson Brenda Raney declined to confirm or deny Chowdry’s estimates, but told eWEEK April 26: "We are very pleased with the sales of Xoom. It continues to be a popular item."
That doesn’t sound like the failure Chowdry is making the Xoom out to be, but positive public relations will often prevail.
Chowdry also declared Honeycomb, which is being deployed on more than a dozen tablets this year, "dead on arrival." He said a survey of 150 developers indicated that Honeycomb is incomplete, sporting an incomplete features set, incomplete developer tools, poor user interface, unstable software, and poor design.
Chowdry had declared similar findings back in March, calling the UI complicated and confusing.
On balance, the 10.1-inch Xoom not only performed well in tests by eWEEK, but measured favorable to the iPad 2 in side-by-side comparisons eWEEK conducted. The Xoom is fast and certainly more graphically pleasing than the iPad 2.
For more, read the eWEEK article: Verizon ‘Very Pleased’ with Motorola Xoom Sales.
